


Nothing Right

by TraceyLordHaven



Series: Next to Nothing [2]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Angst, Episode: s06e26 Unimatrix Zero, Episode: s07e01 Unimatrix Zero Part II, Hurt No Comfort, Mild Language, Post-Endgame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 23:54:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21527845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TraceyLordHaven/pseuds/TraceyLordHaven
Summary: When he sobered up a few days later, he did what he figured any other man would do – he sought friends who would sympathize with him, tell him he had done nothing wrong, and agree that Kathryn was the one who let him down.He was surprised to find a general lack of such people.
Relationships: Axum/Seven of Nine, Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Chakotay/Seven of Nine, Tom Paris/B'Elanna Torres
Series: Next to Nothing [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556821
Comments: 32
Kudos: 43





	1. Something Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Follow-up to "Nothing Left." Probably should read that first. A couple of the comments for that story got me thinking … and that got me writing. Not 100% satisfied with this one, but I think I like where it's going.
> 
> I'm still new at this, but I think I'm supposed to say I don't own these characters? Which is true, I don't.

After his trip to see Kathryn failed to produce desired results, Chakotay went home to Arizona. He spent three days cleaning the house he’d shared with Seven, boxing up of any reminders of her or Voyager, sleeping little, his manic state fueled by indignation and the memory of that damned door locking. When it came time to finally clean out Seven’s room, he hit a wall, figuratively and literally. He saw the picture Seven had started keeping on her bedside table soon after Axum arrived, an image of her, Naomi, and Kathryn on the ship. The pain of seeing their smiling faces was easily ignored once his hand started throbbing – somehow, his right fist had gone through the wall next to Seven’s bed.

He pulled his hand from the wall and sat on the bed to cry. He luxuriated in his tears, and hated himself for them at the same time. He knew he wasn’t crying for the woman who had died in that room only a couple of weeks before.

Chakotay went to his bedroom and opened the trunk at the foot of his bed. That was where he kept what his courage, or what passed for it. He pulled out the first bottle he knew he could open with just one hand, pulled the stopper out with his teeth, and spent the next few hours trying to wipe his mind.

When he sobered up a few days later, he did what he figured any other man would do – he sought friends who would sympathize with him, tell him he had done nothing wrong, and agree that Kathryn was the one who let him down.

He was surprised to find a general lack of such people. But he eventually wound up at Tom & B’Elanna’s, neither of them willing to hear him until Tom cleaned his hand and sealed the remaining cuts. 

After wrapping the injured hand carefully, Tom went to put his med kit away and Chakotay sat on the couch. B’Elanna sat on the love seat across from the couch, putting bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the coffee table. She saw Chakotay glance at it and shook her head.

“No way, old man. This is for me and Tom. You’ve had enough for a good long while, I can smell you from across the room.”

Tom walked in, settled next to his wife on the love seat, and took a sip from the glass she gave him. 

Chakotay couldn’t look either of them in the eye.

B’Elanna sighed.

Tom asked, “Well, you want to talk about it?”

\--------------------------------

“And then she starts talking about this damned blanked Naomi made for her. Then she goes in her house and locks the door, just leaving me outside. Alone. In the freezing cold. Like some idiot.”

Chakotay, once again powered by his wounded ego, was pacing the Paris’s living room. His rant about Kathryn had been going for a full half hour.

He turned to look expectantly at Tom and B’Elanna.

“What the hell kind of response was that?”

Tom opened his mouth to respond, then closed it and shook his head. He looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows in expectation.

B’Elanna was massaging her temples as if to stay a headache. Apparently without success, she looked pained. And a little angry.

“Do you really want me to answer that question, Chakotay?” she asked, her voice tight.

Chakotay’s eyes narrowed.

“Why, are you going to say something I won’t like?”

B’Elanna glared at him. She took her glass and slammed back what remained of her whiskey, then did the same with Tom’s. She got up, grabbed the whiskey bottle and carried it and Tom’s glass to the kitchen.

Tom remained in his seat, looking at Chakotay as though he were trying to figure something out.

"What, Tom?"

Tom considered the man sitting across from him. After a rough start on Voyager, he had grown to consider Chakotay a friend. And he was about to ask his friend some questions that had been left alone far too long.

"Did you ever actually love her, Chakotay? Did you love Seven?" Tom finally asked. "I mean, I know you cared for her, I know you were attracted to her. I know you stayed with her for years. But were you ever in love with her?"

Chakotay looked stricken. He glanced at Tom, then towards the kitchen, then at the floor.

His voice sounded small when he finally said, "No, I wasn’t. That’s part of what I wanted to explain to Kathryn. It was a mistake from the start."

Tom leaned forward, no accusation or recrimination in his face. "Then why did you leave with her?" he asked quietly.

Chakotay just looked at the floor and shook his head.

Tom continued to look stare hard at him.

"Were you in love with Kathryn when we got home?"

Chakotay looked up and laughed a bit, then groaned. "Of course I was. I’ve been in love with her for 22 years, ever since the moment she prevented me from beating you senseless on the bridge that day. I barely remember what it's like to not love her."

He sighed and looked at Tom. "By the time we got home, though, I really thought it was over. I thought the years of … nothing, I guess, from her had cured me of it. Whatever I still felt, I thought I could manage."

“Manage what?”

“My feelings. Keep them from reappearing. Replace them with feelings for Seven.”

Tom’s eyes went wide.

"Damn, Chakotay. You thought you could 'manage' your way out of love with Kathryn? How would that even work?"

“Clearly it didn’t.”

Chakotay rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. He looked up at Tom.

"I would love to know how you figured out how to manage things with B’Elanna.”

“'Manage' anything with B'Elanna?!” Tom laughed. “I never even tried! All I’ve ever done is hang on for dear life! And loved every minute of it, even when I thought I would never get her to give me a second look!” 

Tom shook his head, smiling.

“A woman like B’Elanna – you just want to be where she is. Loving her is what really mattered back then, actually getting her to love me back was an amazing, completely unexpected bonus. So now, I follow her, happily, and sometimes convince her to follow me. I pray like hell I never bore her or let her down. I let her rant and yell, she lets me dream and goof off. I calm her, and she makes me act like a grown-up. We fight like Nausicans and love like Deltans. We challenge each other, support each other, and will each tell the other when we are being complete asses. It’s incredible.”

Tom’s voice and face took on a new intensity and he leaned towards Chakotay.

“Chakotay, my love for B’Elanna is the biggest thing in my life -- the biggest thing there ever was or ever will be. It's as much a part of me now as the cells in my body. I can't 'manage' the blood that flows through my veins, or the bones that support my body. But just as I need my blood and bones to function, I need this love. And it’s not just her I need; I need who I am with her. I need this family we’ve created. I need who we are together to really, truly, and completely live!"

"Not bad, flyboy."

B’Elanna had wandered back to the sitting area. She had a wide smile on her face as she neared the love seat and reached for her husband.

Tom grinned, grabbed her hand, and placed a noisy, sloppy kiss on her wrist. She squeezed into the space next to Tom and poked him slightly in his side with her elbow.

"You'll get your reward later," she said with a sly smile.

She then looked towards Chakotay. 

"What he said? Same for me."

Chakotay couldn’t help but smile. He loved B’Elanna fiercely, and he had grown to like a respect Tom more that he ever though possible. Seeing them this happy after so many years was a wonderful thing.

Deep down inside, though, he resented the hell out of them.

"You have what I’ve always wanted. What I want, now, with Kathryn. What I can't have because I did everything wrong. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m a little pissed at you both."

B’Elanna rolled her eyes and let the last comment alone.

"Yeah, you fucked up. I still don't understand why. What on earth made you give up on her?"

"She didn't need or want me," Chakotay said, sounding a little petulant. "She was pretty clear nothing would ever happen. Why fight for nothing?"

B’Elanna looked at him like he had grown two additional heads.

“What did you want her to do? Declare her love for you on the bridge biweekly? Swoon and fall into your arms every time the ship was attacked? She was the captain, she had to act like it! With everyone, including you!”

Tom broke in.

"OK, I want you to be very clear here,” he said. “She told you, specifically, that she would never be with you. She actually said the two of you could *never* have a relationship."

"No, she didn't say those words. But she made it clear. Nothing was going to happen, at least not while …"

B’Elanna jumped in. “So, she never actually told you ‘no.’ She never said 'never,' she just said 'not yet.'"

"No,” Chakotay countered, “she never said 'not yet.' She made it clear that she would not be romantically involved with a subordinate. Which meant …"

Tom interrupted, "Which meant that if your command relationship ever changed, then something might happen."

"I guess. We didn't really discuss it."

"But you both knew what you meant."

Chakotay shrugged. “I suppose. Yeah.”

B’Elanna then asked, “Did you ever let her think you would wait?”

She actually already knew the answer, but she wanted to see what he would say.

He was quiet for a moment.

“I guess I did. A couple of times. Kind of.”

“Did you ever tell her you changed your mind?” Tom asked.

“No. I wasn't aware I had.”

“Until you started screwing her surrogate daughter, you mean.” Tom replied.

Chakotay glared at Tom.

“I really wish people would not refer to Seven that way, it's a little … unsettling,” he said sharply.

"Unsettling. Yes, I’ll agree with that,” B’Elanna said, nodding. “It was very unsettling for all of us who had to watch it, that’s for damn sure. I’ll also go with disgusting.”

Tom decided to shift the topic to something a little less volatile.

"Why did you fall in love with Kathryn to begin with?" he asked.

Chakotay leaned back and sighed. These were precious memories that he had tried so hard to suppress. To recall them now was the first taste of joy he’d had in ages.

"How could I not? She was so strong and fearless. So compassionate. I told you, Tom, that I had been in love with her since I met her, and it's true. Something about her willingness to just stand in my way and stop me from going after you just knocked me sideways. I just wanted to stare at her. And every day after that, there was something new that drew me in more. Her boundless energy when we were looking for you, B’Elanna, and Harry -- I had no idea a woman that short could walk so fast. As scared as I was for you, I was so enthralled by this tiny, gorgeous, bossy, determined captain. There we were, desperate for a way out of the situation, and I could think was how much fun I was having watching her. 

Tom smiled, remembering those days, but B’Elanna’s face remained impassive.

Chakotay got a little more serious.

“Then when she destroyed the array, I knew her true character. She had a heart for others, even people she didn’t know. She was noble and empathetic. She was a heroine for destroying the array. If it hadn’t been over for me before, it was over for me right then."

"But then when you found out how very Starfleet she was?" B’Elanna countered.

"It only sunk me more,” Chakotay replied. “She wasn't the kind of Starfleet I had walked away from, she was the Starfleet I ran to when I was a teen. Dedicated to helping others, fighting for the underdog, wanting to save lives. She was -- and still is -- the embodiment of everything I ever found admirable about Starfleet."

Tom added, “And not hard on the eyes.”

“Yeah, that too,” Chakotay chuckled.

B’Elanna nodded and said, "I think I understand. You loved everything about her. You loved her dedication, up to the point her dedication got in the way of what you wanted. You loved her strength, except when that strength was focused on the mission and not you. You loved her fearlessness, except when she refused to be ruled by some uncertain fear of losing you. You loved her compassion, except when that compassion was expressed for anyone other than you."

B’Elanna leaned forward.

"As long as all those things you loved about her were focused on you, you were willing to wait. But as she had to expand her focus to others on the ship, you felt slighted. And when she said ‘not yet,’ instead of seeing that answer as hopeful and doing every damned thing in your power to get the ship and the two of you home, you got your feelings hurt because she was focused on the greater good and not your personal timeline." 

She started laughing.

“You really are a piece of work, old man. You fell in love with her because of who she was and resented her because she remained that person. And just before that strength and bravery and determination you speak so lovingly of finally got us all home, you gave up on her. You gave up on the idea that she could ever get us home. You not only told her she wasn’t worth loving, you told her she wasn’t worth following. You failed her as her first officer as well as her love.”

Chakotay looked stunned.

“Damn,” he whispered. Then he said it again. Then a third, fourth, fifth time, his voice finally breaking after a dozen utterances. He put his head in his hands.

Tom got up and headed to the kitchen.

“We need the whiskey,” he muttered.


	2. Something Found Out

The second bottle was half empty when the antique clock struck midnight. Chakotay was responsible for about three-quarters of what had been consumed, Tom the rest. B’Elanna had stepped out to take a comm from Miral who was on a trip off-planet with her grandparents. The men stayed on in the living room, silent for a while.

Eventually, Tom sighed and leaned back in his seat.

“Let’s talk about Seven.”

Chakotay looked up. His seemed to deflate even more.

“I am such a bastard,” he groaned.

“Agreed,” B’Elanna said as she came back in.

“Miral sends her love,” she added as she sat next to her husband again.

Chakotay sighed.

“This is part of why I got so upset. I know I should be more emotional about Seven right now, mourning her, but seeing Kathryn has just pushed all of that out of me. She’s made me so angry that I don’t have room for my grief.”

B’Elanna groaned.

“Great, I get back to the room just in time for more of the self-indulgent pity party. Are you suggesting that if you hadn’t seen Kathryn, you would be chest deep in sorrow right now for Seven, a woman you had a *stunning* lack of love for? That’s crap, Chakotay. I know you. This act of yours won’t work anymore.”

“B’Elanna!” Tom warned.

She glared at her husband.

“You know I’m right, Tom. We’ve talked about it. Hell, we talked with Seven about it.”

Chakotay looked up, confused.

“What do you mean, you talked to Seven about it? About what? When did you talk to her?”

“Oh, she and I discussed you a number of times,” B’Elanna said with a slight smirk.

“Again, about what, and when?”

“Let's start with the 'when.' Do you remember the Homecoming ball when you and I fought, and then she and I fought?” B’Elanna asked.

Chakotay nodded.

“A few days after that, Seven commed me here at home. She wanted to apologize for the fight, and she wanted my advice.”

“Advice about what?”

“About you.”

Chakotay looked confused, so B’Elanna continued.

“She knew I had known you longer than anyone else – had known you when you were with Sveta and Seska. I assume she knew I was aware of your feelings for the Captain. And she knew she wasn’t my favorite person. I guess she figured I was the best choice for a completely honest conversation about you.”

Chakotay nodded for her to continue.

“Seven asked me what I thought of her relationship with you. I told her I thought it was a bad idea – she was too young and inexperienced, you were still in love with the Captain, every single one of us on the ship had just been through an incredibly traumatic experience, so on. I told her I thought both of you would get hurt.”

B’Elanna looked at Chakotay.

“She asked me if she could come over to the house to talk. I said come on. We talked for a long time about you, Chakotay. And there’s no doubt in my mind, deep down inside she knew you didn’t love her. She knew it then. And she knew she didn’t love you. She just couldn’t process it at that time.”

He stared at B’Elanna, then cleared his throat.

“She knew that? Right after we got home?”

B’Elanna nodded.

Chakotay’s eyes drifted to the whiskey bottle on the coffee table. Tom reached for it, replaced the cap, then moved to take it out of the room.

The other two remained quiet, not looking at each other, until Tom returned. He took his place back on the love seat and took B’Elanna’s hand.

She continued.

“After we talked about you that day, she came to see me regularly. She would come to the house or meet me for coffee two or three times a year. We talked about you – I think I was the only person she felt comfortable discussing your relationship with. She was never really sure what she was supposed to be doing with you.”

B’Elanna leaned forward towards her friend.

“I remember one visit, we had been back in the Alpha Quadrant just over a year. She came to see me and she seemed so lost. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know how. She seemed to think she needed to work harder to ‘adapt’ to you. But I’ll never forget one thing she told me, she said ‘Chakotay says he and I are in love. I have always believed him. But … perhaps love is not what I thought it would be.’”

Tom then spoke up.

“She had no experience in relationships, she only knew to follow your lead. She believed you knew enough about right and wrong, about adult relationships, for both of you. She never understood that you were more lost than she was.”

Chakotay’s eyes widened.

“She talked to you, too?”

Tom shrugged.

“After a while, yes. She wanted to talk with someone about Kathryn. She knew I had known her for a long time. Seven remained worried about her. She knew how upset many of the crew were about your relationship, and she was terrified Kathryn hated her.” 

Tom looked hard at Chakotay. 

“I could truthfully tell her that if anyone was to blame, it wasn’t her.”

“Meaning I was to blame,” Chakotay snapped.

B’Elanna scoffed.

“Seven had no thoughts of blaming you, she trusted you completely. And she admired you. She couldn’t make sense of the possibility you could have acted in a way that would have damaged Kathryn.”

“She had an idealized view of you, Chakotay,” Tom added. “Like a child worships a hero.”

“A hero who has sex with her,” B’Elanna muttered.

Chakotay closed his eyes and put his head in his hands again.

“I can’t believe I came here for comfort,” he moaned.

“You didn’t,” B’Elanna replied sharply. “You came here for truth, just like Seven did.”

Chakotay sat silent for a moment.

“Why on earth did she stay with me?” he finally asked.

Tom answered.

“Have you not been listening? You told her the two of you were in love, you told her the two of you were happy. She trusted what you were saying more than what her own heart was telling her.”

“What was her heart telling her?”

“That she wasn’t in love with you. And you weren’t in love with her,” B’Elanna said.

She continued, “That was for the first five years or so. She and I would meet and she would tell me everything that was happening with the two of you as though it was evidence of love. You were the only man she had ever been with, and she talked about your sex life, such as it was, as if it was proof. But even though it sounded as though she was trying to convince me, she was really trying to convince herself.”

“What happened after five years,” Chakotay asked.

“She and I had run into each other at Jupiter Station,” B’Elanna replied. “We decided to have dinner, and she wasn’t talking about you as much. I didn’t want to pry, so I just tried to fill the silences talking about Miral.”

B’Elanna sighed. 

“That’s when she looked at me with a look of, I don’t know, something like wonder in her eyes. And she told me about a dream she’d had recently where she’d had a child herself. And she described the feelings she had in that dream, of a joy that she had no real experience with in her waking life. She was a little shy talking about it, almost like she was sharing a secret.”

B’Elanna looked away from Chakotay, a wistfulness in her eyes. She was still moved by the memory of this conversation.

“I had never heard her speak with that kind of emotion. I asked her if she had ever talked to you about children. She suddenly looked uncomfortable and uncertain. I asked her if something was wrong – I couldn’t believe that you wouldn’t want kids, no matter what was wrong between the two of you. She was quiet for a minute and the confessed that in her dream, this wonderful dream of a child she loved, you weren't there. You were not the father. Axum was.”

Chakotay sat back, seemingly surprised.

B’Elanna continued.

“After dinner, we went back to my quarters and sat up late talking. She told me of her memories of Unimatrix Zero, of Axum. She told me about the times they spent together there, and of her last conversation with him. Then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and asked me why her memories of Axum made her feel more loved than any moment she’d spent with you.”

B’Elanna glared at Chakotay.

“If you had been in the room at that moment, I would have broken your neck. You messed that girl up in ways I can’t even count. You screwed her, kept your heart from her, told her that was what love was, and because she didn’t know any better, she believed you.”

The three sat quietly for a moment.

“And then there was the trip to the Beta Quadrant …” Tom said, breaking the silence.

Chakotay, confused, asked “What trip? Beta Quadrant?”

B’Elanna was still angry and said nothing. Tom spoke up again.

“Starfleet had become very interested in the potential results of Voyager’s interactions with the Borg. Between the liberation of individual drones after the destruction of Unimatrix Zero and the possible long-term loss of the Queen, they thought they had a window of opportunity to really learn about Borg technology and possibly help the Borg resistance movement. About eight years ago, they asked my dad to coordinate the deployment of teams and ships to find those opportunities.

“And he wanted Seven on the Beta Quadrant team?” Chakotay asked.

“I was the one who wanted her on that team,” B’Elanna said. “She had told me that Axum was in the Beta Quadrant. I thought it was perfect. Especially if you didn’t go.”

“That last bit aside, it made a lot of sense to my dad, and the other admirals,” Tom added. “Even though you weren’t involved in Starfleet, Seven’s work kept her on the periphery of a lot of fleet projects.”

“Why didn’t she go?” Chakotay asked.

B’Elanna and Tom both looked at him in disbelief.

“Because of me,” Chakotay answered himself, his voice low.

“Because of you,” B’Elanna confirmed. “She felt obligated to you. She no longer believed in the love story you were still so committed to spinning. Instead, she decided you had some desperate fear of being alone. And since she still partially blamed herself for your separation from Kathryn, she felt it was her duty to stay with you.”

Tom looked at B’Elanna.

“I remember how angry you were the day she turned down the mission. The two of you were talking over the comm and you were trying so hard to convince her to just go. Just go on the mission, find Axum, and never look back.”

Tom smiled as he turned to B'Elanna and said “I recall you telling her that this was her chance to find her own ‘flyboy.’”

B’Elanna chuckled and said “Never happened.”

They sat like that for a little while, until Chakotay spoke again.

“So, you are saying I kept her from her true love? I’ve turned out to be quite the villain, haven’t I?”

B’Elanna looked towards him and tilted her head. Tom knew she was deciding whether or not to tell the rest of it. He squeezed her hand again and whispered, “He should know.”

She took a deep breath and continued.

“You know it was she ship Seven would have been on that actually came across Axum over there. About two years ago. It was the USS Hudson, they found the cube Axum and the other resistance leaders were on. Since Seven wasn’t part of the project, the crew couldn’t tell him anything about her. So he continued working with them in that quadrant until he decided he had to come to Earth and find her.”

Chakotay was stunned.

Tom sighed.

“I talked with Axum after he got here and found out about Seven’s condition. I know he never told you this, Chakotay, but there’s a very good chance she could have been saved. If she had been on the Hudson working with the Borg Resistance when her cortical node started malfunctioning again, she could have been helped. The Borg on that cube had developed a number of methods of repairing malfunctioning nodes, and reactivating nodes from dead drones.”

Chakotay closed his eyes and whispered, “She stayed for me, even though she didn’t love me. Even though I didn’t love her. Even though I was using her.”

When he opened his eyes again, they were filled with tears.

“Basically, I killed her. You two are telling me I used her, and she knew it, and she died because of it.”

Tom and B’Elanna quietly watched a range of emotions run across Chakotay’s face. 

“And you let the woman you really loved believe she wasn’t desirable enough for you, or worthy of you,” B’Elanna said softly, her eyes red.

She got up and moved next to Chakotay on the sofa, taking him in her arms as they both cried.

“I love you, old man, I do. I always will. But I love Kathryn Janeway, and I actually came to care a great deal for Seven. And I’ve spent the last 15 years watching the life drain from both of them, because of you. There were days I could have killed you for it. But I can’t hate you. I wish I could fix it for you, for all three of you. I'd give just about anything to fix it.”

Chakotay was sobbing.

“I did everything wrong. I did it all wrong. Now Seven is dead, Kathryn has given up, and I am alone. And it’s all my fault.”

B’Elanna turned to look at Tom, who was wiping his own tears away.

“Yes, it is,” they both thought.


End file.
